


Bound

by Puimoo



Category: World Trigger (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, whump challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 01:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20649113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puimoo/pseuds/Puimoo
Summary: Tachikawa picks up a package.  That package just happens to be Arashiyama Jun.Or: when Arashiyama Jun is kidnapped, all Border can hope for is that he will be returned in one piece.Whump challenge prompt: kidnapped.





	Bound

**Author's Note:**

> After losing the next two chapters of “Blood Letters” in a computer crash while also suffering from terrible writer’s block for a good year, I am trying to get back into the saddle again and write something, _anything_ at this point, ha. This is for Day 20 of the Whump challenge (prompt: kidnapped). While this was written as a standalone, I am interested in possibly continuing it as I do really like when trauma itself is explored a little bit further.

The street bustles, thick with noise and chatter. Kei pulls his cap down low, eyes shadowed as he threads through the throngs with a clinical detachment. On any other day, perhaps a better day when Kei is wearing a handsome date on his arm instead of a carefully concealed weapon, the dissonance he feels to the world around him wouldn’t ring so loud in steel greys and harsh edges. 

This is not any other day, and so Kei ignores the sharpness of the laughter and the way all the faces look the same (suspicious, unnatural, all knowing and vague all at once). He smothers back a curse as someone accidently elbows him in the small of his back while someone else simultaneously manages to smush in against his side, and it is only his training that identifies both incidents as accidental rather than a threat. With the fluidness of a swordsman (which he just so happens to be, fancy that) he keeps both his balance and his sword hidden beneath his painfully nondescript trench.

Shit. This blending in stuff sucks. As Tachikawa Kei, number 1 Attacker and Border agent voted as possessing the best arse, his reputation alone tends to clear rooms – let alone mere pavements.

“Any sight of them yet?”

Kei’s gaze darts out from under his cap, a critical eye sweeping across each of the faces with a renewed sharpness. The cap is beneath him, in all honesty. Stodgy and cheap and in direct contrast with his casual trench (chosen now because his work one is too stark, so deliberately his). But the cap has the desired effect at least, allowing eyes like a hawk to not single him out as either some man on a mission or – even less pleasant – your run of the mill perv.

“Not as yet.”

“Roger that.” 

Shinoda is clipped and to the point, and a humourless smile curves at Kei’s lips. If he didn’t know Shinoda better, he would think his mentor to hardly care about the situation at hand. 

Kei does, in fact, know his mentor better. It’s one of those benefits of the Yoda-Skywalker type bond mentees have with the men who just so happen to shape their lives.

Kei’s earpiece crackles again, and Kei feeds the status update (or lack thereof) through to his own team. And Kei wonders then, if he sounds a little like Shinoda himself, because he hears his voice reverberate back through the connection as something closer to metal than human. He is not as good as his mentor, not as rounded by experience and carefulness, and so he wonders too if there are cracks in his tone that his team hear, the flighty, jagged edges of anxiety that jar through him.

Kei smirks. Like it hardly matters. His team are used to him, and his weird angles and lazy smiles. They will read into his response what they always have, even now when they stretched out over half a dozen sites. 

Half a dozen sites out of 40 possible locations. Kei’s smirk falls, falls away from that flirtation with ego and down into some grimmer, dirtier. There are 40 possible locations that their ‘package’ may be delivered to, each as different as the next. A crowded street. An empty warehouse. A pretty tree in the middle of a sun-drenched park. 40 of Border’s top agents spread thin around the city with very little backup on offer as a result.

Usually, there is a part of Kei that would salute the superior planning of their enemy. Divide and conquer: there are only so many places Border can be at once, and only a small group of agents who could be trusted to be involved in such a mission in the first place.

This is not a usual situation.

Luckily, the person that Kei is here to potentially ‘pick up’ is one who is unlikely to get lost in the mess of people that Kei so uncomfortably shares the sidewalk with.

After all, Arashiyama Jun is unmistakable, a sun that burns bright even when the world around him falls dark. Kei has a preference for the shadows himself, quite likes the way they catch the spark in Kei's eyes and glint ominously off his sword. It allows him to slide in and out of the light as he chooses, away from the glare of the day but never staying out in the cold for too long.

Arashiyama has never really had that option, recognisable to a fault regardless of how he attempts to camouflage in. Kei remembers some of Arashiyama's more unfortunate attempts back from when they were younger, but it doesn't matter if you cover his hair or shield away emerald eyes, there is always something so ridiculously Arashiyama in the way he carries himself. The upright tilt of his chin, a smile that slides easily between warm and determined and back again. Shoulders that carry the weight of Border’s hopes-

(and its sins)

\- without missing a beat.

It’s stupid, ridiculous even, that Kei knows that he could find Arashiyama Jun anywhere in a crowd. No, more than that. That the crowd somehow always disappears when Arashiyama is around, fades into the background as though others merely play a secondary role. 

Yet, despite all that, Kei is drawn instead to a void. 

The pair who walk towards him are nondescript. They seemingly blend in, seemingly fall in step with those around them, seemingly thread through the throng as though they just happen to pick the spaces that bring them towards where Kei waits.

And Kei doesn’t give a fuck about the one on the right, not right now as the world serrates into clinical greys. He knows he will later, possibly even in a few seconds when the two men are closer, well within the arc of not just Kei’s gaze but also his blade. He allows the man a flicker, a quick up and down that states that he knows that the man may be carrying a weapon and _good,_ because then Kei cannot be held responsible for anything that follows.

A flicker, and then his attention is solely back on the man on the left, so noticeable now because this is not Arashiyama Jun, just someone desperately wearing his skin.

And it speaks to the last two weeks that there is nothing that has been done to mask all the things that should scream to those around them that they are in the presence of Arashiyama Jun, Border idol and occasional, reluctant swimwear model. The black hair is still there, somehow less brilliant now than Kei remembers. Green eyes that should sparkle ridiculously in this light barely register, focussed instead in the tread of the concrete. And Arashiyama – no, Jun, because so little of Arashiyama is present right now – and Jun walks in staccato, guided forwarded as though the mere thought of placing one foot in front of the other is alien. 

Kei grinds down on his back teeth, feels the anger surge through him. That a person could be so arrogant to believe that they have changed someone so fundamentally in two weeks that they would be unrecognisable without even the most basic of disguises-

(for them to be _right_)

Kei unfurls his hands from inside his pockets, smooths away the heaviness that threatens his brows and drops his shoulders, rolls out some of the tension there. His steps even out, artificially so, all that anger forcefully pressed down into the pavement.

Jun doesn’t need his fury right now. 

Jun lifts his gaze, yet not quite so high that they reach Kei’s, as though he is afraid of what Kei might see there. Still, Kei has a habit of seeing more than he is ever meant to, catching the compressed emotions that linger there – not dead at all, but helplessly bound. Jun is always contained in his own way, not this wash of bleeding heart and raw emotion that people miss-interpret him for. Kei’s team had learnt that the hard way once when they thought a sure-fire victory could be won by manipulating the emotions of the Arashiyama Unit’s leader, only to end up on the end of a knowing grin and the echo of a gun chamber.

This is different. 

These are emotions that Jun doesn’t know how to express or how to feel, caged in a terror that Kei sees only fleetingly but which turns already ice-cold thoughts to steel. And yet, Jun is desperately trying to keep himself together. It is the most Arashiyama moment that Kei has seen in him so far, as fractured and as frayed as this attempt is. 

"It was a pleasure doing business with you, Tachikawa-san, Arashiyama-san," the man accompanying Jun states as they come to a stop in front of Kei. The voice is deep and pleasant, as if they have just ended a rather lovely lunch together.

Kei knows this voice; it is the one that had accompanied the video Border had been sent only days after Arashiyama’s disappearance. The Voice had sounded deep and pleasant in the video then as well, in such contrast to the choked sounds that had bled through Arashiyama's gag.

Kei feels sick, stupid and thick. He wants to splice The Voice in half with his sword, smear blood from ear to torso with one flick of his wrist. He is the worst kind of hero, because in that moment he barely cares for the person he is there to rescue and instead hears only the roar for vengeance that burns through his veins. 

“I look forward to our next meeting,” Kei vows darkly, and the sharpness of his teeth and the promise in his eyes will have to do in place of his sword, for now.

A dark, gurgle of a disbelieving laugh escapes through Jun’s lips, and Kei’s startled gaze slides over to him. Even The Voice lets a slither of surprise slip in, before it is smothered away first by anger (how interesting) and then emptiness. It appears their threats seem less impressive when heard by someone else, and Kei almost laughs then, as well.

How ridiculous, to be exchanging taunts in the middle of the street. How stupid, to get drawn into these little games while Jun sways in disbelief between them.

How appropriate, to still be shown up by Arashiyama Jun in a moment such as this. Kei almost wants to applaud.

He doesn’t, of course. That would kind of move this from the ridiculous into the fascicle. He stops acknowledging the existence of The Voice altogether, lets him slide away into the grey as Kei places a hand in the small of Jun’s back and guides him away.

Kei hears – feels - Jun’s gasp, as though he is surprised that it is this easy. A simple shuffle, a side turn, and they are walking away together through the crowd. Still somehow invisible; Kei with his magic cap and Jun with his previously unseen vulnerabilities. Kei wonders what they look like, if not Tachikawa Kei and Arashiyama Jun. Two friends pinned together by the crowd so they fill the space of one? Lovers, pulled close? 

“Almost there,” Kei says conversationally, lets his hand stay guiding from the small of Jun’s back, mouth drawn thin by the tremors that reverberate up through his fingers there. Jun is almost jostled yet Kei is quicker, sleeker, pulls him against his side and leaves him there under the protection of his arm. It isn’t safety that Kei is offering (although he thinks that is pretty much now guaranteed, no-one gets through Kei), nor the much needed medics. Kei’s not stupid (he has receipts to prove the doubters otherwise) (like, actual receipts), and he’s pretty sure he's figured out what Jun wants more than anything else right now.

Privacy.

Three steps, two. They turn out of the sun of the street into the cold stretch of a blissfully empty alley. 

In an instant, Jun's knees buckle from beneath him and Kei catches him in his arms, gently lowering him onto the shitty concrete below. Jun’s shallow, controlled breathing shifts instantly into ragged, harsh gasps that ricochet throughout the alleyway, down in the concrete below and deep into Kei’s chest where he has brought Jun in close.

"I've got him." Kei speaks into his earpiece, clinical, clipped. He leaves it at that, turning his earpiece off with a flick of his hand. They know his location; they know that they will need a medic team. He knows with cold certainty that they will be here in a mere few minutes. 

Jun has those minutes. It is clear that The Voice’s intentions had not been to kill Jun.

It had been to destroy Arashiyama.

Kei doesn’t check for the injuries that he knows are there. That isn’t his job. Instead, when the click-clatter-click-clatter of a train rumbling across an overhead bridge sends Jun’s breathing into chaos and his whole body spasms in fear, Kei steps back himself into Tachikawa mode as Jun’s breath hitches, crashes. 

This, he knows how to deal with. Kei isn’t without his own tricks, not with his training in captivity and torture (there is a whole _delightful_ unit on how to survive both before you even begin to embark on your first away mission).

Low and firm, he speaks into Jun a quiet rhymical beat that mimics that of Kei’s own heart. He invites in synchronicity, drumming the same beat with his fingertips against Jun’s collarbone. That flicker of Arashiyama returns as he struggles to match what Kei has on offer, slowly falling into something that remains off kilter but with some semblance of normality. His breathing slows again, ragged now instead of torrential again, and Kei locks away the thought that something about that rat-a-tat of the train had submerged Jun somewhere that was even more unbearable than being collapsed in a dirty alley.

It’s not much, but this is what Kei can do: stabilising Jun just enough so that hopefully by the time the medics arrive Jun comes across less like a horror victim and more like a trauma one. Kei counts out his own breaths instead of the minutes as Jun’s head lolls down onto Kei’s shoulders, trembling fingers reflexively tightening then relaxing in Kei’s shirts as Jun tries to claw back something vaguely resembling control.

Idiot. There are times when even the sun needs to set for a while. Kei pats Jun on the back in an idle and not at all useless way, his thoughts turning inwards when his hand comes away wet.

Jun is acceptably unconscious by the time the medics arrive, and it is easy then to pass him over to people who at least look the part in their squeeky black shoes and overly starched pants. Kei stands, brushes down his trousers – and shit, the grime from the alleyway is practically caked in – and takes off his cap. He stays, slouched down into his pockets and off to the side as he simply watches, and waits.

Shinoda is there only minutes later, distress drawing his brow down and shadowing his features.

“We will debrief as soon as we get back to the office,” Shinoda says, blending anguish and professionalism as though it is somehow easy to still be human in moments like this.

And Kei still has a lot to learn, he thinks, because it is Tachikawa who nods back.

He carries Jun's disbelieving, shattered moment of laughter back to the office with him.


End file.
